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I stared back at the retractor. He always did that, worded things a certain way. It wasn’t by accident that he just confessed to fucking her. Rome was smarter than that.

“You’ve been holding out on me? You don’t play with me like that,” I fake pouted.

“There are a lot of things I haven’t done to you…yet. Don’t worry. I plan on destroying every fuckable hole you have. There’s going to come a day where I fuck you so hard that for weeks after, the thought of even seeing my dick will make your pussy sore.”

“Oh,” I stupidly said. If he talked like that to me for an hour, I’d probably combust without him having to lift a hand.

Gnawing on my lower lip, I focused my stare on the floor. Did that mean he’d been holding himself back? I didn’t want him ever to feel like he couldn’t be exactly who he was meant to be—in bed or out. I didn’t want a fresh skinned good guy with a moral compass. I wanted my filthy mouthed tattooed devil.

Fuck Prince Charming and knights in shining armor; I had a beautiful dark king.

He came up behind me when I didn’t say anything and nudged me with something hard. “These are for you.”

I glanced down at his hand to see a pair of red pliers.

“Let me guess, a tooth for a tooth?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No. When the cannibals took one of mine, I took all of theirs. She knocked out one of your teeth. Now, you’re going to take out all of hers.”

“I didn’t have a choice,” the woman began to plead. Her voice came out weak and muffled. I wondered how long she’d been tied up like this.

Romero circled me. I stayed crouched in front of the woman who was now yelling incoherent babble.

When I didn’t move right away, he gave me a look that said, ‘What the fuck are you waiting for?’

“Here, I’ll hold her head, just like old times,” he smiled, showing all his pearly whites. He placed both his hands on either side of the woman’s face. And fuck if his thumbs slowly rubbing up and down her cheeks didn’t piss me off. I didn’t want him touching her.

I adjusted the pliers in my hand and went straight for the front right tooth, clamping down on it. I tugged a few times to no avail, ignoring the pained screeches that echoed loudly in the air. “Okay, so this went a lot easier in my head,” I muttered.

After readjusting my grip, I twisted the pliers and wiggled them back and forth, trying to break the tooth away from the root. Blood was leaking from the gums, dribbling down the blonde’s trembling chin.

Tears fell from her eyes. I didn’t care. I wanted it to hurt.

Soon enough, I could hear the tooth starting to crack from my relentless pressure.

I bit down on the tip of my tongue and concentrated.

Without warning, Romero fisted her hair and jerked her head back at the same time I squeezed the handles all the way together and pulled towards my chest.

Her tooth finally broke off with a tiny snick that I almost missed because she wouldn’t shut the fuck up. I let it fall to the old linoleum floor, soaking up her cries of pain, paying no mind to the wretched gag that spilled from her throat. There was a tiny piece left embedded in her pink gums.

Romero kept a firm hold on her head, refusing to let her body reflexively turn away from the source of pain.

I paused for a minute, watching as more blood leaked from the tiny hole the half-tooth left behind and ran over her bottom lip.

I knew the average person had between thirty-two and twenty-eight teeth, which meant this would end up taking a good chunk of time.

Her right front tooth went next, followed by an incisor where a thin strip of fleshy gum came away with it. Romero held her head through the whole ordeal.

Her voice had turned hoarse, and her sobs were dry, all the tears spilled from their ducts. After pulling out another two teeth at random, my wrist was way beyond the point of starting to ache. Furthermore, snot was running from her nose; there was saliva and blood all down the front of her and on my hands. It was disgusting.

With a sigh, I tossed the pliers down and stood up. “I’m getting bored and my wrist hurts,” I sighed, looking for something to wipe my hands off on.

Romero let the blonde’s head go and whipped a dark green cloth out of his front pocket, pressing it into my hands.